A woman was left with a horrific hole in her face after a friend offered to give her cosmetic fillers.
Gina Anderson had decided, after turning 40, that she wanted to get some light work done to her face, hoping that it would make her 'look better'.
But what Gina had to learn the hard way was, you should always go to a licensed medical professional, and not a co-worker.
.png)
Advert
Although the fillers worked at first, Gina's skin started to develop an inflammatory reaction to it four years later.
The irritation under her right eye eventually got so bad that she developed a giant granuloma.
It turned out that instead of filler, Gina's pal had injected her with silicone, causing the enormous growth to develop and leaving her with a puncture in her cheek.
Silicone is illegal to inject in the US and UK. According to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), injected silicone can travel through the body and block blood vessels in the heart, lungs, or brain, and potentially cause a stroke.
Advert
When things went from bad to worse, Gina decided to turn to reality TV doctors Dr Paul Nassif and Dr Terry Bubrow from the E! series Botched.
Before she bit the bullet and paid the Botched doctors a visit, Gina had undergone five other surgeries to try and correct the problem, but nothing worked.
.png)
She told them: "The first one wasn’t bad, they removed the granuloma but it came back.
Advert
"Four months later they tried to get the silicone out and that didn’t work because the granulomas had come back.
“Then a month later it just got so much worse. The granulomas actually made a hole in my cheek .
“They actually did a flap to the lower eyelid area to reattach the skin."
The neurologist had to undergo another local skin flap after a year, but the granulomas came back again less than a month later.
Advert
She shared: "When you can’t sleep and you’re in constant pain it’s hard to think on your feet all the time.
“I’m in agony, I don’t sleep, my hair started thinning like a hair loss and I just started feeling weak and fatigued, it’s been a nightmare."
Gina went under the knife twice on the show, bringing her total number of surgeries to seven.
.png)
Advert
By the time Dr Nassif was finished with her, Gina was delighted with the results, and her body quickly started to recover.
My hair loss has stopped and actually my hair is starting to grow back.
"My thought process is actually getting faster. I mean, it's just a miracle. It's just life-changing."
Ali Condon